Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday will delivered his fourth State of the State speech. Here, in 2012, he delivers his second. (Helen H. Richardson, Denver Post)

Fires, floods and first-responders, as well as the Broncos, are sure to be part of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s State of the State speech on Thursday, a review of his past efforts shows.

This will be Hickenlooper’s fourth State of the State speech. Republicans hope it’s his last: Hickenlooper, a Democrat first elected in 2010, is running for re-election.

He’s been present for almost a decade of the annual speeches, which are delivered on the second day of the session at 11 a.m. in the House chambers. When Hickenlooper was mayor of Denver, he was a guest at the State of the State speeches.

Here’s a look back at Hickenlooper’s three earlier State of the State speeches:

YEAR 3, 2013

Republicans sat stoned-faced when Hickenlooper brought up tougher gun laws, but were helpless when the governor flubbed his last line and uttered, “Oh, Jesus.”

“I think he’s a wonderful man. He came off very well as our governor,” Rep Carole Murray, R-Castle Rock, said afterward. “He shows his humanity. You might not like all of his positions but he is very likeable.”

For weeks now, Republican Tom Tancredo has predicted that Gov. John Hickenlooper would get a big bump in the polls because of his presence during catastrophic flooding to hit Colorado.

But a new poll released today from Quinnipiac University shows that the number of Coloradans who believe the Democratic governor deserves to be re-elected in 2014 has dropped 3 percentage points from an August poll, with 42 percent for another four-term to 49 percent who don’t believe Hickenlooper should be re-elected.

Tancredo, one of a slew of Republican candidates looking to unseat Hickenlooper, said the poll results took him by surprise.

“He’s been everywhere — and on crutches,” Tancredo said, referring to the governor’s hip surgery a week before floods hit a wide swath of the state starting Sept. 11. “We all said the next poll would be good for him so I don’t know what to make of it.”

But early polls can be misleading, as Democrat Jim Carpenter pointed out in July. He noted that Democratic Gov. Roy Romer in early 2003 took a beating in polls but the next year went on to handily win re-election.

“A review of Colorado political history going back 42 years shows a very competitive state that has tilted Democratic in statewide elections for governor and U.S. senator,” said Wadhams, former Colorado Republican Party chairman.

Rick Palacio, chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party, made a similar observation after the Rothenberg Report recently moved Gov. John Hickenlooper’s re-election bid next year from “Safe” to “Democrat favored.”

The latest source of ire for Wadhams came from the Daily Beast’s Tina Brown, who wrote after observing Hickenlooper last week that if Hillary Clinton runs in 2016 she should tap him as her running mate.

“After decades as a Republican-leaning stronghold, Obama won the state twice and the State House and Senate are now controlled by Dems,” Brown wrote in a piece that Wadhams described as a “love affair for Hickenlooper.”

“When one considers elections for Governor and U.S. Senator, Colorado has not been a ‘Republican-leaning stronghold’ since 1972!!!!” Wadhams wrote in an e-mail after I posted Brown’s piece on The Spot.

It turns out, Colorado voters went for the Halloween baby, but Benson has been producing fireworks since he became the president of CU in 2008, pushing for more funding for higher education. He and wife, Marcy, recently were honored for their tireless contributions to the state’s flagship school.

[media-credit id=302 align=”alignright” width=”270″][/media-credit] Republicans Doug Dean and Lola Spradley, former speakers of the House, are at the Capitol today to pay tribute to the late Bev Bledsoe, the longest serving speaker.

If you love Colorado history, tune into the House of Representatives Monday morning where a former governor, 10 speakers of the House and nearly two dozen other lawmakers will honor Bev Bledsoe, Colorado’s longest serving speaker.

The Hugo rancher and Republican served as the speaker from 1981 until 1990. As Colorado’s Front Range continued to grow, Bledsoe often said that he represented a minority — rural Colorado. He died in June at the age of 88.

When Sylas Anderson was born on Feb. 3, 1998, his proud grandmother, Majority Leader Norma Anderson, hollered on the House floor, "It's a boy!" Tonight, the 14-year-old took pictures of his grandmother at her birthday party in Jefferson County.

[media-credit id=302 align=”alignright” width=”275″][/media-credit]

Norma Anderson served as co-chair of Lesley Dahlkemper's successful school board race in Jefferson County in 2011.

Democrat Jim Dyer drove all the way from Durango today to help Republican Norma Anderson celebrate her “milestone birthday,” as her family called it.

The two were first elected to the state House in 1987, and also served together in the state Senate.

“She’s something else,” he said, of Anderson.

That she is. When she was the only woman in the 18-member GOP caucus in the Senate, Republican Sen. Ken Chlouber once joked, “We think one to 17 is a fair fight.”

Ted Strickland and his wife Lu Anne as early returns come in showing him ahead in the August 1986 GOP gubernatorial primary.

The late Ted Strickland, an Adams County Republican whose colorful political career spanned five decades, will be memorialized this afternoon.

Strickland twice ran for governor, served as the Senate president and was an Adams County commissioner. Along the way, he racked up plenty of fans, some enemies and a lot of press, including the time he got Miss Kitty from the show Gunsmoke to fly in to testify that calf roping was cruel to animals.

When I covered my first legislative session in 2000 I walked into the AP office at the Capitol and saw a picture hanging upside down. Who’s in the picture? I asked. It was Ted Strickland. That’s when I learned that Strickland had had a run in with legendary AP reporter Carl Hilliard. Hanging next to the picture was a yellow newspaper clipping of Strickland losing his re-election to the Senate in 1992.

As Denver's mayor, John Hickenlooper had a front row seat to the governor's state of the state addresses. Now he's the one giving the speech. Here he is in 2007 for Gov. Bill Ritter's speech, flanked by Gary Hayes of Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Michael Bennet, school superintendent turned a U.S. senator.

Conventional wisdom says Gov. John Hickenlooper’s State of the State speech today might be under half an hour.

Last year, the Denver Democrat in his first address likely set a record for the shortest State of the State speech in recent memory: 25 minutes.

Denver may be bored with this year’s municipal election, which seems to have the pulse of a piece of cold marble. But for those of us who get paid to pay attention, the 2011 campaign has been anything but boring, featuring excitement, humor, sadness and some very strange moments.

Here, less than a week before Tuesday’s ballot count, is a breakdown of the best and worst from this year’s campaign.

Best Mayoral Forum: Candidate Survivor. Hands down. The April 6 forum at Casselman’s was put on by the folks at New Era Colorado, featuring questions posed by a man dressed as a bed bug, drinking among the candidates, crowd-voting by text messaging and, yes, dancing. A crazy night that had Doug Linkhart winning after he threw candies to the crowd and promised to legalize marijuana.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.